Primrose
by Alexabee
Summary: [Reposted] Prim and Katniss end up in the community home. Canon divergence from Prim's POV. Rated M for non-graphic references to child molestation. Keywords: Canon divergence, community home, Prim's POV, everlark, one shot, child molestation trigger, rape trigger, angst, happy ending.


[Originally posted to AO3 in November, 2012. One line is quite similar to one used in THG movie, on purpose. Reposted by request.]

_I'd grown up seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. I could never let that happen to Prim... The community home would crush her like a bug._ - Katniss Everdeen

* * *

I don't remember the day that my mother died.

I remember the day my father did, because Katniss was crying. I was only seven and too young to understand the full implications of words like _mining accident_ and _deceased._ But I understood that my sister was hurting. So I crawled into her lap and wrapped my arms around her neck to comfort her, and we cried together.

But my mother's death came as quiet as a whisper. She had been so lifeless in her mourning that it was impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when she faded away completely. Katniss had already taken over her responsibilities. There were no more tears left in my sister's eyes by then, just steely determination.

I mimicked her courage.

One hungry morning, Katniss sat me down next to the hearth, wrapped me up in the quilt from our bed, and told me that she was going to find us something to eat. She made a tiny fire from a few charred scraps of leftover wood – a "Prim-sized" fire, she had called it – and showed me how to gently blow on the coals to make the flames dance when they got too lazy. Then she pressed a handful of mint leaves into my palm and told me to chew them slowly and stay put – she would be back soon.

So I did. I stayed there and blew carefully on the fire, just like she had shown me. One by one, I sucked all the flavor out of the leaves, then chewed their pulp until that, too, dissolved in my mouth. I watched the long, fingerlike shadows of trees rake themselves across our kitchen floor as the afternoon wore on. At one point, a stray marmalade cat with a ragged ear sauntered along the ledge outside our kitchen window and peered through the smudged glass, looking for scraps that I didn't have to offer.

I stayed there all day, with the edge of the blanket pressed to my nose to block out that rotten, sickly sweet odor coming from the bedroom, where Mother's body still lay.

The grayish light of that winter afternoon eventually faded into a dusky purple. Then the rain started, and the wind came howling down the chimney shortly after. I sat there in almost total darkness, but I wasn't scared. I knew that Katniss would return. She would never leave me.

So I continued to wait, right through the storm, still blowing on the charred remains of the long-dead fire every so often because that is what she had told me to do. Each little puff now sent a cloud of snowy white ash into the air. It lodged in my hair and settled onto the blanket draped over my shoulders. And that is how the peacekeepers found me when they forced open the door, dragging my soaked sister along behind them – shivering by the stone-cold hearth.

Coated in ash.

Waiting.

One peacekeeper held Katniss roughly by her arm, so roughly that it frightened me. She had been caught stealing scraps from the merchants' trash bins. "There's the other one," said his partner, his heavy boots tracking mud across the floor as he approached me.

"Let go of me! Let go!" Katniss growled, trying to wrench herself free, but the first peacekeeper only tightened his grip.

"Little girl, where is your mother?" the other official addressed me, then stopped and covered his nose at the putrid smell of death.

"_Let go of my sister!_" is all I shrieked, running to her side. "_Let go of my sister!_"

* * *

My first kiss made me cry.

Katniss and I were walking home from school, hand-in-hand, one day shortly after my ninth birthday, when I burst into tears right there in the middle of the gravel road.

"Prim, what's wrong?" she asked, voice laced with concern. She immediately pulled me into the safe, warm space under her arm. I clung to her.

"I don't want to go back there," I sobbed, molding myself to my sister's side and weeping into her threadbare sweater. "I want to go home!"

I was so frightened. All the children living in the community home were scared, especially since the newly assigned overseer was easily angered and had big fists. One sad, timid little boy named Thom had fresh bruises on his face and arms almost every day, and we had never once seen him smile. But a beating from the overseer was not what I was afraid of. All of the home kids were from the Seam, and the rest of the boys and girls had dark hair and slate grey eyes, just like Katniss. I was the only one with blonde hair. I stood out.

The new overseer never hit me. But he did touch me.

The night before my birthday, he had told me that he had a special present waiting for me in the kitchen. There, on the table, sat a beautiful cupcake with glittery pink frosting and a fat, glistening cherry on top. Sometimes Katniss would take me by the bakery window to see the sweets on display, but I had never actually tasted one. None of us had. Of course, we all longed to. But there was something that made me hesitant to accept the overseer's gift.

"Come here, Little Duck. Sit on my lap," he had said, stroking my braids and calling me by my pet name. He continued to fondle me, sliding his hand down my back and finally resting it on my bottom, which sent a shiver up my spine. Whenever my father had cuddled or tickled me, it had always been loving. But this man's touch felt wrong. "I bet you've never had one of these, have you?" he asked, lifting the sugary little cake to my lips, expecting me to eat straight from his hand. "Take a bite."

"No thank you," I replied softly, looking down and twisting the worn hem of my grey dress – the drab community home 'uniform' that the other girls at school sometimes teased us for wearing. I tried to make my refusal as polite as possible, hoping that it wouldn't spark one of his violent outbursts.

"But I bought this just for you! Don't you want your present?"

I shook my head, staying rooted to the spot despite his attempts to pull me closer. I froze my face in what I hoped was a neutral expression and acted more interested in my hem than ever before. Intuitively, I knew this was all wrong, even though I could not figure out exactly why. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and every part of me wanted to run, but by then the overseer was gripping the back of my dress, trapping me against him.

"Then at least let me give you a birthday kiss," he said, and a moment later his hot, wet mouth was on top of mine, pressing hard. His tongue tried to worm its way between my lips. His breath was foul with tobacco, and the bristles of his beard jabbed sharply into my chin.

As soon as it was over, I began to cry. Somehow I knew that screaming would only make things worse.

"Shush, Primrose. Quiet now. Give me your hand," he commanded, releasing his grip on my dress to take my wrist instead. But in that brief moment I managed to squirm out of his grasp and run for the door.

The overseer didn't try to kiss me again that evening. But the following night, I awoke to the sound of heavy breathing and found him standing over my bed, watching me. It had been impossible for me to sleep ever since, and I could no longer bear the thought of another terrifying night in the community home.

So I begged Katniss to take me away from there, back to our _real_ home. I bunched up her sweater with my small fists and sobbed into her side.

"I want to go home too, Prim. We all do," she said softly. Even at the age of nine, I knew from her tone that going home was not an option. The district had surely assigned our old house to some other family, anyhow. "Listen to me," she reasoned instead, lifting my chin. "You have me, and I have you. And as long as we have each other, nothing bad will happen to you. I promise."

"W-will you stay with me tonight? In m-my bed?" I sniffled.

"Of course," she answered. "Are you having nightmares again?"

I nodded, only because I had no words to describe the truth.

* * *

The night I awoke to rough fingers fumbling beneath my nightgown was the same night that Katniss attacked the overseer.

"Get away from her! Don't touch her!" she had screamed, scraping at his eyes with her fingernails. I don't think either of us knew exactly what he had been planning to do, just that it was very, very bad. He eventually released me and turned his attention on her, throwing her to the ground face first.

"No!" I wailed. I watched helplessly as the man grabbed a fistful of my sister's long, dark hair and smashed her jaw into the wooden floor. Blood poured from her mouth.

"Don't want me to touch the little one?" He breathed into her ear, pulling her head back. She made a yelping noise, like a kicked dog. "Sounds like you just volunteered to take her place!"

"Prim! Get out of here!" she managed to choke, just as the overseer shoved her nightgown up her naked back. Pinning her down with one big paw, he mounted her like some kind of beast. I was too horrified to move. "Prim, get out! _Now!_" she cried.

Feet skidding, I scrambled down the dark hallway and into the nearest room I could find - the bathroom. With shaking fingers I locked the door. Then I promptly threw up on the floor.

My mind couldn't piece together what was going on, but that last image of my sister, facedown and bloody, was one I couldn't stop seeing. All I knew was that whatever was happening to her at the hands of that man had originally been meant for me. And it was something terrible.

After that, the overseer never tried to kiss me again. But he started hurting Katniss a lot, at night, in her bed. Sometimes I would hear it. She told me to close my eyes and always pretend that I was asleep, no matter how scary it sounded. Afterwards, she would crawl in with me, trembling, and we'd hold each other.

"Are you bleeding again?" I would ask softly.

"No," she would always answer, even if she was. Then I would go to the bathroom and get a damp handful of toilet paper and press it to her split lip or bloody nose or whatever other injury marked her body. And I would cry for my beautiful, brave sister.

"Does it hurt very much?"

"Shh, I'm fine," she would soothe me. "Don't be scared. No more tears. Go to sleep." Then she'd start to stroke my hair. And if that didn't work, she'd sing. But by morning, our roles would be reversed and I would be the one curled around her, holding her protectively.

One time, I woke up to find bruises on the back of her neck that were bigger than both of my hands put together.

That's when I decided that I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up.

* * *

"Prim, wake up!"

It was sometime in the night. Katniss was hissing in my ear, shaking my shoulder. There was a fresh welt on her chin. "Come on, we have to go now."

I didn't even need to ask what was going on. We were running away.

Wordlessly, I scrambled out of bed and cradled the soft bundle of clothes that she had pushed into my arms. We then crept down the staircase, picked up our shoes and slipped - barefoot and silent - out into the chilly winter night. The sky was a rich, velvet blue, clear enough to see all the stars winking down. Each cobblestone beneath our feet was coated in a thick layer of frost.

"Can I put on my shoes now?" I whispered, stumbling to keep up with my sister's fast clip.

She looked back over her shoulder as we hurried onward, her breath leaving puffs on the cold air. "Yes, but not here. Up that alley. Behind the bakery."

"Katniss, where are we going?" I ventured once we had stopped.

"The woods. There's a cabin there that Papa showed me a long time ago. Here, put on your coat."

"The woods?" I asked, my teeth chattering. I tried to jam feet into my hard little shoes, but my toes were too painfully numb. She bent down to help. "But where will we get food to eat?"

"I don't know yet, Prim. I guess we will have to hunt."

"Hunt!"

"Well, no one else is going to feed us," she said impatiently, finishing the tiny buckle.

At the same moment that she stood up, the back door of the bakery swung open and a blonde boy who looked to be about Katniss' age stepped out. In his arms were two charred loaves of bread. He was one of the baker's sons, though with the bruise on the side of his face he could have passed for one of the kids from the community home.

Both he and my sister froze as soon they made eye contact over the tops of the bins.

"Come on, Prim," she urged quietly a moment later, gripping my icy fingers.

"Wait," said the boy. He glanced over his shoulder at the open door behind him, then rushed towards us. He held out both burnt loaves to my sister and whispered, "Take them."

Katniss just stared at him in shock. When she didn't move, he tucked one loaf into the bundle of clothes I had clutched to my chest, then thrust the other into hers. And then he was gone, just as soon as he had appeared. Everything was silent once more.

The bread in my arms was still warm.

"Katniss, why did that boy do that?" I asked as we hurried up the alley.

"I don't know," she answered hollowly.

"That was nice of him. Wasn't that nice of him?"

"Yes, Prim."

"Are bakers always awake so early?"

She didn't answer.

I looked up, shocked to find tears streaking her face. My sister hadn't cried since the day that our father died. Noticing the fresh blood staining the back of her nightgown, I figured it must've been because she was in pain. So I insisted on stopping near the meadow to rest and eat our bread.

"Aren't you hungry? It's really good bread," I murmured, curling up against her so we could share each other's body heat. When she still said nothing, I started tearing off little pieces from the loaf in my hands and trying to feed them to her.

All Katniss did was sit there, blinking out tears as she hugged the other warm loaf to her chest.

I think maybe it was the first kind thing that someone had done for her since our father died.

* * *

We never did make it to the woods. The following week, our overseer was dismissed. It had something to do with a letter and none of the merchants wanting to sell to him anymore. He ended up having to take a train out of the district in the middle of the night. By the next morning he had been replaced by a dour older woman with a pinched-in face. Like all of our guardians, she stole from the home's food supply and re-sold it on the black market to earn extra money for herself, but at least the severe beatings stopped. I didn't see a spot of blood on my sister's nightgown again until months later. When I jumped out of bed to take care of it, she stopped me.

"I think it's okay this time, Prim," she smiled. She sounded relieved.

* * *

One wet spring day, I spotted a soggy yellow puppy tethered to a chain-link fence behind the school. The skinny animal was sitting in a mud puddle. Its tail started to _splish-splish_ happily as soon as he saw us.

"Oh, Katniss, he's hungry! Can't we give him something?"

"Prim, this is all we have," she answered, holding up our lunch bag. The home kids could not count on consistent lunches, but she had saved two pieces of coarse bread from yesterday's dinner and had stolen a soft, pink-cheeked apple from the fruit basket to assemble our meager little meal. "Besides, he must belong to somebody," she added gently. "He'll be okay."

"But what if the people he belongs to aren't nice to him?" I asked forlornly. _What if he's like us,_ I wanted to say.

My sister's lip twitched a little bit, but other than that she did not say anything. She just reached into the bag, took out a piece of our bread and tore it in half.

"Here," she said, handing me the biggest chunk. "You feed him."

Soon I was on my knees in the mud, grinning as the puppy licked crumbs from my palms and snuffled around my fingers for more. Every so often, my sister would hand me another bit of bread. In the end, she gave up her entire lunch so I could feed that little dog. She acted very grown-up and refused to pet the muddy creature, but I saw her hiding a smile as we turned to go inside.

It was then that I caught flash of blonde hair disappearing around the side of the school. Someone had been watching us.

I think it had been the boy with the bread.

I hoped so.


End file.
